I spent some time over Con-tinual, where I’m a regular panelist, talking about traveling for research. In May I got the chance to visit Greece with my friend Helen Corcoran. Unleashing two fantasy authors on such an inspiring setting was a dream come true.

I wanted to share some of the some sites we visited to bolster my research for Dark Moon, Shallow Sea.

We went to a lot of amazing places, but I’m going to focus on the more obscure ones. The Shallow Sea is a crucial piece of the book’s setting so spending time on the Aegean was essential.

I definitely didn’t feel it was “wine dark” in any way, even by night. We spent one night at Nea Makri, a seaside town where the Athenians go to get away from the heat but it was early enough in the season that we didn’t encounter any tourists but ourselves. It gave me the chance to see how the locals lived and the food was excellent. I couldn’t resist the chance to sneak a copy of our books down to the water to get some shots:

The ancient Greeks lived with a keen awareness of the sea, of its danger and its gifts. They hated drowning. It was a death they loathed. I imbued the inhabitants of my world with a similar dread, as well as a very angry storm goddess, but also with the appreciation of the beauty you find in water:

Helen’s book looked just as striking there:

Our last stop of the trip was at Sounion, south of Athens on a cape. It’s famous for its temple of Poseidon and the very scant ruins of a temple of Athena. The sunset is especially beautiful.

The rocky shore and sparkling water dotted with islets really captured the feel I wanted for my fictional land of Aegea’s eastern coast:

We didn’t limit ourselves to the shores. Religion and the conflict between competing faiths play a huge role in Dark Moon, Shallow Sea. Worship of Phoebe, the murdered moon goddess, and her Mysteries are an essential part of the plot, so Helen and I trekked west, into the north of the mainland, and visited Dodoni. This is one of those sites I have wanted to see my entire life. First, it has an oak tree oracle sacred to Zeus, but like so many places touched by myth, it predates him. Since I used the exiled Greek Titans as the gods in Dark Moon, Shallow Sea I particularly wanted to find traces of their worship.

The temple of Themis still shows its foundations and the oracle of Dodona is believed to have once been dedicated to Rhea (Zeus’s mother) and/or Gaia (his grandmother) much as Apollo’s oracle at Delphi was once held by Phoebe (Titaness of the moon). We had the site almost to ourselves and it was well worth the time and going out of our way to visit it.

I spent some time listening to the tree and was charmed to see that people still leave coins as offerings:

The site’s remote setting lent it an air of peace and we walked it for a good while:

The site wasn’t just the foundations of the temples. The theatre was in decent shape and undergoing some careful restoration/preservation efforts:

I did not get a picture but as we were leaving and visited the little gift shop a gray cat walked in with something orange in her mouth. As she approached the shelf behind the counter we heard her babies crying and realized that she was carrying a kitten in her mouth. Outside we saw the orange dad and guessed she’d taken the baby to show him and say “see? it’s yours.” It was one of those little moments I like to put in my books to give them a bit more grounding and a touch of reality.

The plants that grow at ancient sites can tell you a lot about the history and sometimes, the mythology. Holly at a giant’s grave in Ireland for example, helped me know he was a Winter King.

Speaking of religion and sites, Eleusis is something more people should see. Near to Athens and home of the Mysteries, which we still know very little about (as they were secret upon pain of death), the site sprawls along a hillside in an industrial town. The museum has gotten a makeover since my last visit and I was pleased to see some great artifacts, including same ancient cloth in a drawer you can pull out and view.

Eleusis was dedicated to Demeter and the search for her daughter Persephone. As they are tied to the seasons and cycles of planting and harvest, iconography reflecting this is everywhere.

This site was important to me as Dark Moon, Shallow Sea includes a visit to Thiva (named after another place in Greece that you’ve likely heard of as Thebes). In the book Thiva is a bread basket, a green fertile island blessed by the goddess Rhea (or was until…well, spoilers).

Red poppies are common everywhere in Greece, but their significance at Eleusis shouldn’t be missed. Poppies were given to Demeter to help her sleep when she couldn’t rest, being too frantic to find her missing daughter:

Greece is plagued by earthquakes, which the ancients attributed to Poseidon. Unfortunately, this along with time and the razing of the Pagan temples at the command of the Christian emperor Theodosius means that the ancient sites are largely in a state of disrepair. Some were spared if they had been converted into Christian churches but time and war have often worked their wear on these as well. Aegea is much like that. The gods (the Greek Titans) arrived there after their exile by their children and found the world already inhabited. They began a war of colonization against the gods who preceded them. Ruins dot Aegea and one bit of graffiti states “this world was old before the gods arrived.” Eleusis’s scale and decline helped influence my take on the book’s world.

Little bits of the ancient faith still bubble up, peeking like bones from the earth. An example of this is at Eleusis, where offerings to the Hades and Persephone, as gods of the Underworld, are still left at this small cave entrance.

Much of the ancient statuary of Eleusis was looted or destroyed, but the museum holds two truly significant pieces. One caryatid, whose sister was removed and who used to hold up the roof and one of Antinous, the beloved of the Emperor Hadrian, who died tragically and was deified. Hadrian loved Greece and was inducted into the mysteries. Statues of Antinous abound and I collect pictures of them. My favorite is in the Vatican.

Part of Demeter’s rites was to reenact her search for her daughter. This annual march began in Athens, at the gate of the Kerameikos, the ancient cemetery (which is a must see in Athens if you get the chance). Helen and I took a picture at the gate (though we did not reenact the march to Eleusis):

Another import site near Athens when it came to my research is Brauron. Sacred to Artemis and in a marshy spot, snakes abound (hence the metal walkways). This is another museum that has gotten a big glow up since my last visit and its history is fascinating. Worship of Artemis (as was dedication to Dionysus) provided women a way of existing in Athens’ patriarchal society (and to some measure an escape from it) but at the same time the cult also acted as a way of graduating girls to womanhood and taking their place in society. Girls often left their dolls and playthings there as an offering to demonstrate this transition. Brauron is largely my inspiration for Eastlight, a small island in the eastern Shallow Sea (from the book’s title). We visited Brauron on our last day and it was a peaceful spot, though the groundskeepers were very worried about the snakes (and that made me less contemplative than I would have liked).

There is also a small statue of Hecate, crossroads goddess of witchcraft. In Dark Moon, Shallow Sea, Phoebe is the goddess of secret knowledge and prophecy (usually through dreams). Her role as the moon also meant I wanted to look more closely at Artemis. Hecate, as a triple goddess, is often depicted as the three in one:

Ancient altars were often round and looked like wells. Artemis’s altar from Brauron is in poor shape and has been reconstructed as best as they could. This kind of broken iconography was a big inspiration for me and how I wanted religion to work in the book.

That’s it for my Destination Research: Greece posts. Thank you for reading along. You can find Dark Moon, Shallow Sea everywhere and in every format on on Oct 31, 2023. Daughter of Winter and Twilight by Helen Corcoran is out in Europe and in the US soon!